Unofficial news and tips about Google

December 29, 2010

Top Google Apps in 2010

Here's a subjective list of Google services that were launched or were significantly improved in 2010:

10. Google Scribe - a service that shows autocomplete suggestions as you type. It will probably become as popular as Google Suggest and Google Translate once its integrated with other services.

9. Voice Actions for Android - an application that lets you control your phone using your voice. You can call your contacts, send email, get directions, listen to music, write notes and go to a website.

7. Google Buzz - despite the initial privacy brouhaha, Google Buzz is the best Google service released in 2010. Even if it's less than one year old, Buzz already has an impressive set of features, a powerful API, it's integrated with many services and has a cool factor that's missing from other Google social products. Unfortunately for Google, Buzz is not yet very popular.

4. Google Maps - vector-based maps for Android, Google Latitude for iPhone, a new local search service (Google Places), social local business reccomendations, biking directions, walking navigation, Google Earth as a tab in Google Maps, search suggestions.

1. Android - two important releases (Froyo, Gingerbread), huge growth (from 1.4 million smartphones sold in the third quarter of 2009 to 20.5 million phones one year later - according to Gartner) and a lot of new devices, including tablets, TVs, consoles, media players and e-book readers. It's probably the fastest growing product released by Google.